Loihi has earned the achievement Level 100

We did it!! *happy dance*

Initially, I thought it would take longer. But then at some point, I just knew it would happen on Wednesday, and sure enough!

On Friday night when things were still a little buggy, I wasn't able to log in to any of my alliance characters. So I ended up logging into Amayaa and giving the horde quests a go, even though I told her that she was in for a long rest. She was pretty excited to see me again so soon. I spent the evening leveling her. I kept switching back and forth from prot to ret. Neither made me very happy. In ret, I was super squishy and kept dying. But prot is only good if you're able to round up a whole bunch of mobs and then mow them down. Once Josh catches Zelu (his BE hunter) up, I think I'll stick with prot and we'll be set. But he isn't ready to play Zelu just yet.

So aside from Friday night, I've spent all of my time playing Loihi. We took a couple of short breaks on Saturday and Sunday because there comes a point where I can't sit still anymore. But Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we played from the time I got home from work till the time our heads hit the pillows. We attempted to play with Todd on Monday night, which I think set us back a little. All three of us were 96, and Josh and I were questing in Spires of Arak. Todd had been PvPing and hadn't quested since Gorgrond, so he couldn't get most of the quests that we had. We ended up going around doing bonus objectives and killing rares until he had to leave. Let me just say that I am over the Arakkoa. Their quest line was WAY too long and annoying. Overall, Spires was my least favorite zone so far.

Josh and I are in the habit of moving onto the next zone as soon as it's available, and we never complete any of the zones. This time we felt it was important to complete a zone before we moved on, so we hit 100 just as we reached Nagrand. We only did the first few quests in Nagrand, but I am loving it. It feels like home. But of the zones I've completed, I think I liked SMV the best.

I went back to my garrison and upgraded to level three. So exciting!! Josh, unfortunately, didn't think things through and wasted all of his resources changing buildings. So he only had about 100, when he needed 2000. Ooops. Needless to say, he was a little butthurt. I haven't done any research on garrisons, but I knew better than to mess with things before I was 100!

I tried out the proving grounds, and bronze took me several attempts. I'm really really struggling these days, and I don't know why. I've always been good at warlocks, even when warlocks were bad, and it's really upsetting that I'm doing so poorly. I know gear is a factor right now, but I know my skills (or lack thereof) are a bigger factor. I need to do some research. We ran Sky Reach, and Josh was doing 3-4k more dps than I was with a lower item level. Ugh. Gotta get my shit together!!

Welcome to Draenor

Yesterday was probably the longest work day of my life. It's hard to say though. It was comparable to the day I was leaving for Disney World a couple of months ago. I'm not sure which I love more - WoW or Disney World. Haha. I stopped by the grocery store on my way home to stock up on Mountain Dew. I almost never drink Mountain Dew except when I'm planning on an epic gaming session. (Honestly, I knew it wasn't going to be that epic last night because I had to come back to work this morning.)

So I got home, logged in, and got straight to it!

For all the whining I've done about always being on a low-pop server, I was glad last night. I didn't have to wait for one minute in a queue to log in. However, Josh did run into a bit of a snare. He had been playing his druid (Yonywu) earlier, but he had intended to level his rogue (Popkorn) with me. He wasn't logged on at all when I got home. So he went to log in to Popkorn, and it was doing the 90% loading screen thing. Finally, it went back to the character screen and said, "A character with that name already exists." I searched the /who, and sure enough, it said Popkorn was online. Only, she wasn't. I checked the forums, and it seemed all the people it had happened to had been knocked offline, and when they tried to come back, it gave them this error. It was strange because Josh hadn't been online at all. But we waited 15 minutes for it to "log off," and then we were set to go.

General chat was so full of tears, I'm surprised it didn't flood. So much, "You would think Blizzard would know how to release an expansion by now! They should be prepared for this!" Y'all. That's like saying, "You should be prepared for someone to drop a bomb on your house." Even if you know in advance that it's coming, what the hell are you going to do? There's only so much preparation they can do. The rest has to work itself out (for example, after a few days, EVERYONE won't be trying to log in at the same time) or get worked out as they see the issues. 

One of my favorite WoW memories was on the WotLK release day. I was out in Borean Tundra killing things, when all of a sudden, every NPC in sight disappeared. Friendlies, enemies, neutrals...all of them. Gone. What could I do but laugh? It was funny! I don't understand these people who rage over things like this. They came back after a few minutes, and I stopped laughing and got back to killing things. I've seen every release except Vanilla and MoP, so I knew what to expect. Everyone is saying this one is the worst, though. Maybe that's true, but for me it doesn't seem so. And it wasn't the lag or the problems with the garrisons are any other game factors that upset me. It was only the other players whining about the problems that got under my skin.

And Blizz's hatred for warlocks. So way back in the day, warlocks didn't have any instant spells except for curses, and a curse wouldn't tag a target. Because, you know, people are always just accidentally throwing curses around. You have to throw a 3-second shadowbolt to show you really mean it. (I don't know if shadowbolt ever really had a 3-second cast time. It seemed like it was a 5-minute cast time before haste was a thing. But I'm destro; I don't even have a shadowbolt anymore.) So on a release day, or in daily zones, when there were a ton of players and not so many mobs that needed killing, it was nearly impossible for a warlock to get what she needed unless she was killing things with a friend. Then Blizz finally realized, hey, this isn't cool! A curse is a spell and it should tag a target. Thanks, Blizz! I love you guys! All was well in the warlock world. I could quest on my own again. And then they took away our curses. I can conflagrate every so often, but that just isn't enough. So last night, when I was in a crowded area, I would just cast rain of fire right over myself. It wasn't stealing mobs from anyone because the chance of hitting a mob is still pretty small and it was only getting the mobs that I should have been able to get on my own. So then this death knight comes and lays death and decay directly under my rain of fire. Really dude? You're melee. You have death grip. You have zero trouble getting mobs. Even if you still wanted to use my tactic, you couldn't move over ten yards and get the mobs that would never have even come near my rain of fire? When I finally finished that quest, I had a few choice words for him. His response was to try to invite me to  a group. Really?!

I'll be sure not to get separated from my pocket rogue anymore.

I got about two bars into 91 before I called it a night. We got a bunch of upgrades, which was pretty sweet. Okay, so maybe a lot of them weren't actually upgrades, but we figured we ought not look a gift horse in the mouth. If they want me to show a little lot of skin, I guess that's what I'll do.

Goodnight, Sweet Amayaa

Last night, I didn't feel much like playing WoW. I live on the east coast, which meant that if I wanted to see the release of the expansion, I would have to be up at 3am. I was online around 5:30pm and saw a bunch of people saying they were going to bed so they could get up at 3 and start playing. Later, I lamented that I had not done the same. But let's be real; I would be falling asleep at my desk right now if I had done that. Game release or no game release, I had to come to work today.

I sat in Stormwind, talking in trade chat a little, but mostly just watching. There were so many names that I haven't seen in years. It was amazing to see those people coming back. The Scryers was always a low-pop server, so it was a pretty tight-knit community. You recognized people's names, and you knew who their alts were, even if you weren't friends with them. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside to see those familiar names again.

Before logging off, I went to have a moment with Amayaa. It's always a tough decision - who am I going to level first when a new expansion comes out. But it's always been Loihi. It's just the way it is. It doesn't feel right any other way. But I love Amayaa just as much, and I feel that I am truly horde at heart. (Probably why I have a real life horde tattoo.) It's hard to leave her. So I told her I'll see her when I can, and I tucked her into bed with one of her many kitties. She's going to need plenty of rest when it comes time to venture into Draenor.

Ye Olde Scourge Invasion

Remember the Scourge invasion pre-Wrath of the Lich King event? Yeah, so do I.

I dreamed about it the other night. I dreamed about it! It's pretty safe to say that was my favorite thing that ever happened in World of Warcraft. In searching for an image to use for this post, I learned that it happened the first time Naxxramas came to town as well. (That was about six months before I started playing.) So there is hope!! There is a new Lich King, and we will have to defeat him sometime, and when that time comes....another Scourge invasion!! Please? Pretty please, Blizz?

I know a lot of people hated it and cried about it because they couldn't do their dailies and boo hoo hoo, but I had so. much. fun. I think that's pretty obvious if I'm dreaming about it six years later. So here's hoping the next expansion brings us some zombies. (Not WoD. The next one.)

Another Hallow's End Gone By

We didn't get the mount.

Excuse my interface. Adelaide and I were too distraught to think about hiding it.